MARCH 2020-MARCH 2024: From Online Magazine to Full-Length Book

It was a four-year writing sprint!

What started as a story-based 2020 GOTV effort in support of the Democratic ticket became a book project in the summer of 2021 when it became clear that the Biden-Harris administration was not going to follow through with their campaign promises on immigration. Candidate Biden convinced us, in 2020, that the soul of the US nation could be restored, in part through compassionate, human-centered immigration reform. But when the Texas courts rolled back Biden’s March 2021 Migrant “Protection” Protocols (MPP) rollback, the president’s Department of Justice didn’t put up a fight. Rather, Biden brought back the newly minted Remain in Mexico program (RMX) later that year, extending it to include arrivals not just from Central America but from the entire Western Hemisphere.

It wasn’t the first campaign promise betrayed.

There was also the 100-day moratorium on ICE Air deportations, also stopped by Texas, and within five days of Biden taking his place behind the Resolute Desk.

By the Ides of March 2021, the immigration reform package Biden-Harris introduced on inauguration day was tossed to el dompe of history, never to be heard from again; ICE Air was back in business, with Biden en route to dropping more Haitians back into a house on fire than his three presidential predecessors combined; and the Dignity Village encampment that I encountered on my arrival in the Rio Grande Vally of Texas in January 2020 was erased.

But the greatest mistake of the Biden-Harris administration, according to a Homeland Security insider who agreed to be interviewed for my book on the condition of anonymity, was not lifting Trump & Co’s abuse of Title 42 of the US Public Health Code on day one. In this way, they let the most damaging legacy of the Trump administration live on — giving Border Patrol cowboys and Border Protection cops permission to kick everybody out as quickly as possible, with impunity and without legal due process — thus moving the Overton Window as to what could be possible at the border.

My continued outrage fueled me to take further action: I resolved to turn my storytelling project to date into a book, with the oral histories of impacted individuals and first responders woven into my own journey of awakening to the issue tracing the history of how the Land of Immigrants, human rights, and the law came to find itself in this wretched, hypocritical, heart-breaking place.

All it would take now was to 1) find a publisher; 2) conceive a structure; and 3) get my butt in the chair every day to get the job done in time for the 2024 Election. No small task.

Fortunately, I had my writing buddy, Gryffindog, as well as my editor, copyeditor, and several first readers beside me every step of the way, helping me keep pace.